


maybe, maybe

by readythefanons



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Hair Brushing, Nail Polish, Smooching, applying make up to another person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:27:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26546755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readythefanons/pseuds/readythefanons
Summary: So it goes like this: Leonie and Lorenz meet again. His hair's crazy long, it's kind of cool. They start dating.Months later, she walks in on him messing with his hair in the bathroom, and his reaction isweird,like she caught him doing something wrong.Maybe whatever's up with Lorenz and his hair isn't totally about his hair.She never totally figures it out, but that's okay.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Leonie Pinelli
Comments: 15
Kudos: 41





	maybe, maybe

**Author's Note:**

> modern au  
> I can't shake the mental image of Leonie with a soft hawk and the inclination to do really wild make up now and then. she probably got a bunch of piercings in college and wears a cool jacket  
> this one goes out to the girl in college who put make up on me _one time_ and made my heart go pitter-patter. i have no idea if she remembers it, but i sure do :D

The first time Leonie saw Lorenz after high school, she thought, _that’s weird. That guy looks just like Lorenz, but with long hair._ Joke’s on her, it _was_ Lorenz with long hair. 

“Lorenz, dude, do you remember me? We went to high school together,” was her opening line. It wasn’t amazing but it got the job done. Lorenz startled (that brought back memories) before smiling. That was new. It looked good.

“Leonie, hi, of course I remember you,” he said. “It’s nice to see you again.” His hair was _long,_ like crazy long. It was pulled back in a low ponytail, and it had to be like halfway down his back. Her brain was breaking a bit trying to superimpose this guy on her memories of, well, better-than-thou bowl cut Lorenz from high school. 

“Love your hair,” she said.

“Thank you. I like yours too,” he said, and blushed. Oh, that was interesting. That was _interesting_. Leonie smiled and ran a hand through her hair. Her hair was long for a while too but now she had it in a kind of soft fauxhawk thing. She liked it.

“Thank you,” she said. “Holy moly, it’s been a long time, what have you been up to?” Turned out Lorenz had just been hired in the systems design side of the company (Leonie was on install and maintenance, which was nice because it meant that she got to get outside on the regular). It was his first day. 

“Lorenz, sorry I lost you, I got caught up talking to—oh, hey, do you guys know each other?” that was Sylvain, meh. He was looking between the two of them, interest on his face. Lorenz’s blush had abated during the rapidfire game of catch up, but it was back. _Interesting._

“Kinda, yeah,” Leonie said, and smiled at Lorenz. He smiled back, pinkly. Aw, yeah. There was something there.

They ended up exchanging numbers eventually, and when Leonie found out he’d moved to the city recently they ended up meeting up outside of work now and then, and then they met up regularly, and when Leonie got a chance to tap that, she sure did. 

Okay, well. Actually they were probably-kinda-unofficially _seeing each other_ and then he invited her back to his place, and they quote-unquote _bedded each other_ , and then Leonie was lying, naked and postcoital in Lorenz’s delightfully soft sheets, and he was quiet and lying on his side, curled towards her, and he had a question on his face, and she reached out and kissed the back of his hand. And he looked happy, and Leonie thought _yeah_ and not to be overly sentimental, but Leonie didn’t mind making a dude happy now and then, and if all that took was kissing his face and sleeping over then so be it. So they started dating.

It was fun! Leonie didn’t know the specifics of Lorenz’s life after high school (but she suspected it wasn’t an entirely happy story since he’d always talked about _becoming a lawyer, like his father_ and here he was, not being a lawyer and having long hair when he’d always been amazingly judgmental of other people’s style choices in high school and Leonie was _not going to ask_. If he told her on his own, fine, and if he never said a word about it, those were his secrets to keep) but Lorenz now was—he was fun, and sweet. Leonie maybe-kinda-definitely liked him a lot. In fact, it would be fair to say that she loved him, so that was a thing.

Actually, it was such a thing that it would be fair to say she was totally _smitten._ Every little thing that was new and unexpected was sweet and everything that was the same was cute, and Leonie was losing her goddamned mind because even opening Lorenz’s tea cupboard (he had a tea cupboard, and somehow she found it cute instead of pretentious) made her smile because all the boxes and tins were arranged by color and size. The dude really liked tea, and more power to him. She was pretty sure he was lowkey trying to figure out what was The Perfect Leonie Tea or something because he had this very _attentive_ look he got every time he handed her a mug. Sometimes she asked questions about what was in the tea just to watch him perk up and spout tea jargon at her. She was smitten.

They’d been dating for, oh, wow, almost half a year when she walked into the bathroom (his bathroom, his place was so much nicer than hers, god she should try to get her shit together) and saw him, like… playing with his hair. It wasn’t anything weird, he just had it kind of brushed to one side, so it came up and over and trailed in front of his shoulder. What was weird was how he _reacted_ like she’d caught him doing something weird, immediately pushing his hair back into its usual configuration and turning _red._ The dude blushed plenty (fair complexion, it was a thing) but that was different from going red like this. Also different: the way he was suddenly not making eye contact with Leonie, his girlfriend.

“Eggs are done,” Leonie said mildly. “Thinking of changing up your look?”

“Ah, no,” Lorenz said, still red, still not making eye contact (as if Leonie couldn’t see him peeking at her out of the corner of his eye). “Just—no.”

“Okay,” Leonie said, still trying like hell not to sound like she thought anything was weird here. “It looked nice.”

“You think so?” Lorenz asked diffidently, and huh okay Leonie’s heart was breaking a bit at like ten AM on a Saturday. Cool.

“Yeah,” she said and moved so she was behind him, arms looped loosely around his waist. She peered at him in the mirror. “Show me again?”

“I didn’t mean to show you the first time,” he grumbled, but he used his fingers to brush it back over, didn’t meet her eyes in the glass. His face was pink, not red, this time. His expression was a little anxious (why?) but not panicky so, well.

“Love you,” she said. She regarded him. Lorenz normally wore his hair tied back, but when it was swept to the side like this he looked, oh, softer somehow. He looked soft and sweet (although that might have been projecting, Leonie was kind of gone on the dude) and kind of feminine. “You look nice,” she said, and meant it. She tried to use her voice to indicate how much she meant it, but she was never sure how successful she was at that. “Really nice. Not that you don’t always look nice,” she added and kissed his shoulder.

“You think so?” he asked, and oh cool her heart was quietly breaking into a million little pieces, thanks babe. His voice was all—quiet and not sure and hoping and anxious and— _honey._ She didn’t know what that tone of voice meant exactly (she had her suspicions), but it was murdering her.

“Yeah, babe, you do,” she said. He turned a little so he could peek at her, and she stood on her toes to kiss the tip of her nose. He blushed a happy pink and ducked his head, so she kissed his forehead. Her heart did a little pitter-patter, plus a little stumble as she said, “If you want to mess around with your look, hit me up. I love that shit.” She did, he should know that, she was always messing with her hair, trying out different ways to spike it up or whatever. Heck, he’d been here for the Home Dyeing Experiment (her place, not his, his was too nice) and its aftermath.

“Yes, darling,” he said, like some Victorian gentleman or whatever and Leonie was _so smitten_ , god, and he kissed her nose and said, “Did you say the eggs are done?”

Well, she knew how to roll with a topic change, so she did.

Lorenz liked getting his hair pulled in bed. That was just, like, a scientifically-established, immutable fact. It was probably true across all corners of the multiverse, even the freaky ones where they were like medieval peasants or whatever. _But_ Leonie also discovered that he liked having his hair played with. At least, she thought he did? He only let her do it when he was drunk (tipsy Lorenz was so cute, _god_ she was into him) but he would put his head in her lap and, like, wiggle around until she touched him like some kind of cat-person. And when she finger-combed his hair, he turned happy-pink and made happy noises. So the next time _that_ happened, she rolled with it and, like, finger-combed it all to one side, and then she braided it. 

It was a hot mess of a braid, what with him laying down and her trying to braid it upside-down, but hey. She didn’t have a hair tie, so when she was done she just pinched the end. He was looking at the braid, and he was still pink, and the look on his face was—god, Leonie didn’t know. Wistful? _Yearning?_ If Lorenz wanted braided hair, he didn’t have to yearn for it, for god’s sake.

“You should let me do this more often,” she said, and he went from pink to red, and he looked at her (his own girlfriend) like she was trying to trick him, like he thought she was about to betray him, and she said, “Dude, you really should. It’d be great.”

“Why?” he asked, still like he was looking for a trap.

“It’s fun,” she said. “I kinda miss having long hair sometimes, I used to braid it and shit.” It was only a little lie; she did miss the long hair sometimes. It just so happened that the short hair was fun too.

“You want to?” he asked, and she nodded, played with the end of his braid. 

“I don’t know how to braid,” Lorenz said, looking at his hair in her hand. Leonie wished she’d done a nicer job of braiding it all of a sudden.

“You could learn,” she said. He shook his head. “Or you could just let me do it. I’ll make it nicer than this.” He didn’t say anything after that, just curled up on his side, head still in her lap, and went quiet. Okay then.

Leonie thought maybe whatever was up with Lorenz and his hair wasn’t totally about his hair. It was just a gut feeling. It turned into a suspicion when she was messing around with her nail polish.

They’d exchanged keys to their apartments (!) so Leonie broke out her nail polish to mark the key to her boyfriend’s (!) apartment (!). She painted it purple, and as long as she had all her nail polishes out, she thought why not. So she was doing her nails at her counter. He let himself in (with _his_ key to _her_ apartment) bearing takeout containers. 

“Sorry about the smell,” she said. He deposited the containers, kissed her head, washed his hands. 

“It’s fine,” he said, peering at her work. She smiled, waved the hand she was working on the general direction of her newly painted key. 

“Want me to do yours?” she asked, and his reactions were so _weird_ sometimes.

“What?” he asked, a little too loud and a little too sharp. He looked—something. Distressed.

“Your key,” she said, “I can paint it so you don’t get them mixed up.” 

“Oh,” and he was way too relieved, god. “Okay.” He was blushing (red) when he passed her his keyring.

“Uh-huh,” Leonie said. “If you can take the key off, though, that would be easier. I’m not quite dry.” She flapped her painted nails at him, watched the way he watched her hand.

“Of course,” he said, and came around the counter to stand next to her while he worked the key off the ring. “That’s a nice color,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said. She smiled at him. “It reminds me of you.” He blushed, pink this time, and made an ‘aw’ noise. Cute. She was sorry for what she was about to say as she was about to say it, but, “You could let me do your nails too.” 

“I don’t think so,” he said. He set the key on the counter next to her.

“I could do one nail, or your toes,” Leonie said. “Or I could just put on a clear layer so it doesn’t show.”

“Why?” he asked and he sounded—helpless. Leonie… understood, maybe. She felt helpless about him sometimes, like when she didn’t know if it was more harmful to push or to let things be. 

“Just ‘cause,” she said. “It’s fun, and no one has to see it, and I’m in the mood.”

“A nail painting mood?”

“Sure,” she said and smiled at him. He looked… she didn’t know. Yearning. It hurt her. “Let me do your toes. We can take it off again right away if you hate it. Please?”

“You’re a strange girl,” he said, which meant yes. They ended up sitting on the floor next to the counter. Leonie hesitated.

“Clear?” she said. “Or a color?”

“I—you decide,” Lorenz said. Leonie picked up the bottle of clear, watched his expression out of the corner of her eye. She picked up the purple, then black, then red. She kept picking them up and putting them down, like she wasn’t sure which one to pick ( _like_ nothing, she _wasn’t_ sure), and she _thought_ his eyes were following the red, so she went with that. She held up the bottle. He was blushing.

“What do you think? Hate it?”

“I said you can choose,” he said. Well. Okay. She went with the red.

Ugh, she was so convinced the color was a mistake at first. It was so _bright_ , so showy, and god what if he hated it (and god when did she get invested in nail polish colors). But then she kept going, and she was convinced it was perfect, it was so—it looked so pretty, and it was bright and classic and just perfect. And then she flip-flopped again, and that’s how it went the whole time she was painting her boyfriend’s toenails. 

Lorenz was quiet the whole time. Dead quiet, like he wasn’t even breathing. Leonie didn’t know what she was doing (what else was new) and she didn’t know if this was a good idea or a bad one or something else entirely.

She finished the first coat on both feet, sat back. Hm. 

“It looks nice,” she said. It was true. Bright and pretty. She looked up at him, smiled. “Yeah?”

“It’s—fine,” Lorenz said, and his voice was quiet and Leonie didn’t know if that _meant_ anything. He wasn’t looking at her, but he was looking at his toes. She touched his foot gently.

“Don’t wiggle them, it’ll smear,” she warned. “Hold still for a little while. I’ll do a second coat.” He made a noise she didn’t know how to interpret, so she kept talking. “See how it’s a little streaky? That’s because I only did one coat. When I do a second layer, it’ll be more solid and nicer.”

“Okay,” he said, and then he didn’t say anything else. He was flushed, still, and Leonie wasn’t sure if it was a good blush or a bad one. She finished up her other hand while the first coat dried, then she did the second coat on his toes. He stayed quiet, they both did. When it was done, she sat next to him, looked at his toes. She liked it. It really was pretty.

“It looks nice,” she said again. “What do you think?” He shrugged. 

“If you like it,” was all she got out of him. He wiggled his toes, blushed pink. Well, okay. 

Yeah, he definitely liked it. He never said anything, and she never asked, but—he kept wiggling his toes. Even when he had socks on, she was pretty sure he was, like, curling his toes for no reason. Also once in a while she caught him looking at his feet, and the look on his face was—complicated. It made Leonie’s heart hurt in complicated ways.

She wondered.

She wondered and wondered, and their anniversary came and went and she was still just—wondering. 

So eventually, Leonie just… asked. Like, hello, not everything needed to be some kind of, of game or whatever, she was a human, she could use her words.

Specifically, she asked, “Hey, can I, like, put makeup on you? Please? I kinda really want to.” And held her breath. 

Lorenz—yeah, turned red, dull red, and asked, “Why?” His voice was sharp and accusatory (and straight out of high school, file that under ‘oh, shit’ and cross-reference it with ‘so that’s what that meant’ and also ‘I fucked up’) and Leonie understood just enough by now to _think_ that that didn’t exactly mean ‘no.’

“I think I’d like it,” Leonie said. “I used to put makeup on my girlfriend, and it was really, uh, sexy. I dunno.”

“Why?” Lorenz asked again, still sharp and hard.

“Um,” Leonie said. Off to a good start. “Well, it’s, uh, kind of intimate? Like, I’d be touching your face and it’s kind of weirdly intense? I’m not explaining this well.”

“You like it?” Lorenz asked sharply, and Leonie nodded. “And you think you’d like to do that with me.” She nodded. “Even though I’m a man?” She nodded again.

“Plus you have really nice skin, and I love your face,” she said. It was true. He stared at her hard, and she waited, and eventually—he dropped his eyes, nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Very well,” he said, and his voice was so soft it was almost a whisper.

Leonie almost bailed at that point. She felt like she’d, oh, bullied him into it, brutalized him like emotionally, but also—if she bailed now, she was pretty sure he’d never say yes ever again, and—that didn’t seem right. 

“Thank you,” she practically whispered back. She left him there, got her makeup bag out (yeah, she was carrying it around for just such an occasion, hush, and yes maybe she’d picked up a few new things just in case, double hush). She had him set at the end of the couch where the light was best, sat on the ottoman in front of him. He had his eyes closed and flinched when she touched his face, and that—god, was she hurting him, what if this was hurting him. 

She willed herself to—stop shaking at least. If she was going to put stuff on his face, she needed to not be shaking. She needed to not poke her boyfriend, who was barely trusting her as it was, in the eye. God. She used her shaking hand to tuck a strand of his hair behind one ear. He relaxed a little. Okay. She tucked another bit of his hair back. They both relaxed a little more. Okay. His eyes were still closed. She kissed his cheek. Okay, she could do this. Nothing to freak out about.

Leonie, for herself, either went with no make up or big showy stuff, but she was pretty sure if she slapped purple and gold on Lorenz, he’d never let her anywhere near him again. She kept it light, didn’t spend too long getting fussy with it, but didn’t let herself rush. Primer, foundation. Okay. Eyeshadow. He was breathing evenly by now, thank god, and she was—oh, she hoped he liked it. By the time she hit the eyeliner, she was in the zone. This was what she remembered, the—closeness, the care. She was poking around another person’s eyes with a stick, and he was letting her. God. She wanted to kiss him, but she had a job to do. Finish the eyes, move on to the mouth. She filled in his lips. Okay. He still had his eyes shut. She slipped off the ottoman, kneeled in front of him on the couch. Carefully, she reached around him, tugged his hair tie out. He kept his eyes shut as she brushed his hair to the side, like that other time. She fiddled with the strands, made them hang all soft and nice looking around his face. She dug out the hand mirror. Okay.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “Take a look?”

His eyes flicked open, caught on his reflection. Stuck there. He… kept looking, and Leonie held her breath, and… Lorenz stared and stared. The expression on his face was way too complicated for Leonie to even try to decipher; it almost felt too personal for her to even witness. She held her breath as he turned his head this way and that way, watched silently as he raised his hands and—ghosted them over his hair, barely touching. His hands were shaking.

“What do you think?” Lorenz asked, and she was pretty sure she was supposed to be asking him that.

“I love you,” she blurted, and he smiled faintly, still didn’t look away from the mirror. Did that mean he liked it or?

“And I you,” he said. Oh, god. She needed—she put the mirror down, took his hands. He looked at her, finally, and he—he didn’t look mad, or wounded, and that—good. That was what she needed. She kissed his fingers, his knuckles, turned his hands over to kiss the delicate bones of his wrist. He was looking at her now, and his eyes were—hot and dark. 

He tugged her up, and she kissed him—carefully, she didn’t want to mess up her work. He opened for her readily, didn’t try to push the kiss into something messy either.

She kissed him and kissed him, and she was trying to be—soft, for him, and sweet, for him. Leonie was many things, but soft and sweet were not always among them, but she was trying—for him—and she hoped to god that counted for something. She kissed him and kissed him, and he was swaying into her. Then she _was_ kissing him messily, probably smearing his lipstick, and he was practically melting into her lap.

“We should have sex, but not on the floor,” she eventually managed. Leonie Pinelli: queen of romance. He made a noise of agreement. But didn’t otherwise, you know, do anything to help her out here. She manhandled him in the direction of the bedroom as gently as possible. Okay. 

She nudged him into the middle of the bed, fussed the pillows around him until he was all snugged up and comfy looking. She caught the way his hands twitched towards the back of his neck, helped him arrange his hair so it came down over one shoulder again. Oh, Lorenz. She tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, kissed him a little. Then she pressed the palm of her hand against the front of his pants because Leonie, as it were, had her eye on the prize.

He was hard, which was not especially surprising given how much kissing they’d been doing. He also gasped, which was a bit surprising. He normally wouldn’t be so worked up from some smooching. Leonie kissed him some more, fought with the fastenings of his pants and eventually won. 

They didn’t fuck in the sense of _engaging in penetrative sexual intercourse_ , for all that Leonie had been planning on riding that cock. Instead she fit herself between his bent knees, kept stroking his cock. He made a high, aroused noise when she curled herself over him, and a higher, hornier noise when she rutted against him (dude, she had such a nice strap-on at home, she could be pegging him right now). He hitched his knees up, tucked himself into a soft _fuck me_ kind of shape, made _fuck me_ noises. Leonie obliged, did her best to press him into the mattress (despite, you know, height disparity), kept stroking him. 

Oh, and she was talking, kind of, more or less the whole time. Pretty normal stuff, _Lorenz, sweetheart, I love you, I love you_ and also bits along the line of _so good, so sweet, love you_ and a generous sprinkling of _you look so nice_ to say nothing of the frankly excessive use of the endearments _sweetheart, my love_. She did slip up and call him pretty—he _was_ , she’d been thinking it for like a year already—but that was, hm. His cock twitched, which seemed good, and made a wanting noise, which was encouraging, but he also _flinched_ which was. Nope. She soothed him, went back to informing him of how nice he looked and how much she loved him, refrained from using the words ‘pretty,’ ‘beautiful,’ or even ‘gorgeous’ just in case. (He was, though, he was he most stunning person she’d ever seen.)

He came, and it was the sweetest and hottest thing ever (admittedly, she was rather biased, especially at that point in time), and she stayed over him, kissed his forehead and his nose and each eyelid. Her sweetheart.

He blinked his eyes open, and his gaze was, hm, watchful but not wary. He wasn’t afraid of her (thank god) but he seemed curious about whatever she decided to do next. She decided to kiss him some more. 

Eventually they eased themselves out of the tangle they’d put themselves into. Lorenz offered to get her off, and Leonie informed him airily that he would be doing that later and with interest, thank you (a joke, she kept score for a lot of things but sex was a cooperative sport, not a competition) and instead cordially invited him to take a shower with her. He accepted, and Leonie almost (but didn’t) miss the way he—was briefly caught by his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His hair was still brushed to the side, and the makeup was mostly intact. He was still--he still looked like himself, just. Different, a bit. He caught her watching, blushed pink-red.

“Seems like a lot of time and effort,” he said. She kissed his shoulder, watched him in the mirror.

“I can do it again. It only gets better the more you do it. Experience and all that.” She was watching him, but he was watching her, and hm. That was different, to both be observing each other. Why, they could almost see eye-to-eye if they wanted to. 

“Do you want to?” he asked, and it was—not yearning (good). Wistful, maybe. (Maybe hopeful.) Leonie kissed his shoulder without breaking their gaze. 

“Yes, I think so,” she said. Lorenz smiled, and there was something—light, there. She smiled back. She didn’t know where they were headed, but she didn’t mind finding out. (Together.)

**Author's Note:**

> (The Perfect Leonie Tea turns out, in this corner of the multiverse, to be an extremely robust black tea with smoky notes)
> 
> i meant to be working on the hair thing but like... i love these two and can't stop thinking about them? it was this close to being the teen adventures of bffs lorenz and leonie (platonic soulmates!) (or maybe...?) to say nothing of the like three half-formed a/b/o drafts floating on my computer. c'est la vie!


End file.
